Conventional wireless communication protocols used by mobile stations are not concerned with assuring message sequence synchronization between a transmitting station and a receiving station. This has been satisfactory when the messages represent spoken communications, because the receiving person simply asks the other party to repeat an unclear utterance. Similarly, lack of message sequence synchronization has not been a concern for the relatively simple data services which have been the major users of wireless communications, such as paging systems.
However, for more complicated data applications, it is helpful if the wireless communication protocol provides at least a rudimentary form of message sequence synchronization. Unfortunately, since existing protocols were defined without a need to provide message sequence synchronization, there is no particular provision made for providing message sequence synchronization.